A brief and impromtu holiday

Amsterdam is full of surprises with a fresh adventure around every corner and yet another canal in whichever direction your instinct takes you. Dil and I, (Dil is my husband for the uneducated amongst my readers) arrived on Friday and by the end of Saturday evening we'd seen the edges of the red light district, smelt and probably inhaled a good bit of cannabis as we passed by the "coffee" shops. There was a T-shirt in the window of one of these establishments which summed up what the normal practice is. It said, "smoking allowed, tobacco banned"! Needless to say they were selling the wrong stuff for us. In our 36 hrs here we've paid over the odds for many cups of coffee, eaten much delicious food (the best was in a restaurant called CAU which I can recommend wholeheartedly), and munched our way through some rather strange boiled sweets, 'Old Dutch Rainbow Mix'. There are very many churches here, all very large and mainly inaccessible and uninviting. The largest one is supposedly the biggest church in Europe and Rembrandt is reputed to be buried there, though no-one really knows if either of those 'facts' is really true. One attraction I really wanted to visit was Anne Frank's house. We found it along with a queue that went round several corners and we decided not to bother as it was raining heavily and we didn't want to go there enough to warrant a soaking. We discovered later that it would have taken anywhere between 2 and 4 hrs to get in. I couldn't help wondering what Anne would think of the museum and cafe which cleans out the wallets of the tourists, it's all rather distasteful really. Instead we took a canal cruise to see the city's waterways and view from them. Then hand in hand we strolled the streets and passageways that meander alongside the canals and connect them by Amsterdam's myriad of pretty bridges. It was the most delightful couple of days. The only thing that spoiled it slightly for me was seeing, and hopefully not being identified with, the stereotypical 'Brits' who stood out like a sore thumb due to their drunkenness and dress (or lack of it!)

We found the Dutch people friendly and extremely efficient and at the same time quite 'chilled out'. They were respectful and seemed to appreciate our presence in their fair city! (Would I be cynical to comment that it was our money that makes us welcome – it has been a very affluent society and they do tourism extremely well) My recommendation - "Visit and pray"